[Setup-tool-hackers] Networking: missing system infrastructure.

[Arturo Espinosa Aldama <arturo mezcal dyndns org>]

Hi.

Ideally, the xst should just take care of configuring the system, using
the available infrastructure, so users wouldn't become dependant on xst.
But what happens when there is just not enough, or the current tools don't
do the right thing (dhcpcd)? Miguel and I had talked about the eventual
need of creating our own tools, which would be called by the backends,
and agreed such things should be implemented, but perhaps not for 1.0.

Take pppd: there's no place from where to take the phone to dial. In
redhat, there's /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/chat-ppp0, which could be
used to set and get the current phone to dial. But this script does more
than that, and the way to get the phone number is not completly reliable
(matching ATsomething in the second fields of the file).

A better case: what if we want to have an ipchains configurator? What if
the user already has its own configuration? Where would we get it from? Or
just think about the people which set static routes and interfaces 
manually, by putting their ifconfig and route commands inside some
startup script.

So the obvious policy here is to ignore manual (i.e. rc.local)
configurations, and maybe detect configurations which don't seem to be in
any system file (like /etc/sysconfig/network) and tell the user that the
tool won't be able to manipulate those items.

Example: the network-conf backend, after looking for interfaces that are
inside /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts and checking which are active, also
lists those that were not found in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, so the
frontend warns the user. This warning could be set not to appear again, to
avoid annoying those users that know what they are doing.

Also, it seems unavoidable the need for the network backend to create its
own "phonebook" for ppp connections, if we want to have that feature. Is
this desirable, or should the user just set up as many ppp connections as
internet providers he may have?

Greetings,
Arturo


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